Royal Protocol Read online

  And walked straight into Benedek, who’d apparently been pacing her room. She could have sworn the guest suite had been as large as a ballroom, but the prince’s imposing presence had a way of shrinking the space.

  Rain beat against the windows, the rapid tapping matching the crazy rhythm of her heart.

  I swear we’re going to finish this, he’d said earlier. And now he was here.

  All of a sudden, she wasn’t sure she was ready for him. In fact, the more she watched his hungry gaze, the less prepared she felt. Her hand flew to the robe to hold it tighter and higher, covering that horrid old scar on her neck.

  He looked her over, head to toe, not missing an inch, scorching her with his full attention. “Are you well?”

  “Of course.” Unless she burst into flames from the heat that was gathering inside her under his inspection.

  “Maybe Dr. Arynak should check you out.” But he looked like he very much wanted to be the one doing the checking. “He’s the royal physician.”

  The last thing she needed after last night was being poked and prodded by a doctor. She didn’t need medical attention, not unless acute arousal was a life-threatening affliction. “No thanks.”

  His chest rose and fell. He looked like he wanted to devour her whole, heat boiling in his dark gaze. But instead of moving forward, he stepped back. “I brought you this.” He lifted a large royal-blue velvet box from the antique dresser behind him by the wall and held it out for her.

  Thunder clapped. The air seemed as heavy inside the room as it was outside the tall windows.

  She shouldn’t have moved closer to him, out of sheer self-preservation, but curiosity had her closing the distance between them and gingerly opening the box. A silver hand mirror with matching hairbrush was nestled inside on a bed of velvet. The royal coat of arms graced the mirror’s back.

  “My grandmother’s. Morin just had it cleaned and polished, and had new bristles put in.” He hesitated, watching her face. “Do you like it?”

  “I love it, but I can’t accept it.” The gift was way too extravagant. And she never accepted any gifts from the men who pursued her, on principle.

  “Will you toss them like you tossed my roses?” He cocked his head.

  Those gorgeous purple rose bouquets he’d sent her before her performances. “I give all my flowers to the staff,” she confessed. “I am somewhat allergic to pollen. I have a rule against keeping flowers in my dressing room. I guess I’m paranoid about getting a stuffy nose or having my throat swell up just before a performance.”

  “My apologies.”

  “No, it’s—” She paused, trying to decide how to explain. “I’m not one for presents.”

  “You don’t want to be beholden,” he observed keenly.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s yours.” He pushed the gift towards her. “No strings attached.”

  “There are always strings.”

  “Like with your first manager?”

  Damn that he would remember everything she’d told him. “Yes.”

  “And your husband?”

  “How do you…”

  “He was a wealthy and powerful man. He invested a lot in your career.”

  All of which had to be paid back with interest, many times over. Not just in the financial sense. It stunned her that he would understand that.

  “I’m not like that, Rayne.”

  And she was beginning to believe that he wasn’t. She hesitated.

  “Please.” His dark gaze would not release her.

  And for the first time, she thought she saw some well-hidden vulnerability in it. Her taking his gift was important to him.

  If he’d said, I insist, she would have just walked away from him. The quiet request caught her off guard.

  “Thank you.” She surprised herself by accepting the box and placing it on her nightstand.

  “You do need to brush your hair anyway.” His gaze warmed, a slight smile playing above his lips.

  Right. She did need to take care of her unruly hair before it dried like this. She might frighten the staff. If she walked back into the bathroom to finish her toilet, it would put some distance between them.

  Dry hair.

  Put on underwear.

  Which waited for her on the bed, along with some beautiful clothes in her exact size, domestic magic by the maids.

  She was acutely aware that she was naked under the robe, and Benedek was only an arm’s length from her. From the fire in his eyes, her lack of clothing had definitely come to his attention as well. He was such a man for detail. She appreciated that quality in people normally, but right now, she wished he were the more absentminded type who wouldn’t have noticed that wisp of lace underwear laid out for her on the bed.

  Judging from the bulge in his pants, he had.

  His immediate response to her was disconcerting. He’d acted the same way in the catacombs. They’d brushed against each other enough times in the dark for her to have felt his unapologetic need for her. It turned her on and scared her at the same time. And surprised her. It had never been like that with Philip. His infrequent trips to her bedroom had always been about domination, about exercising his rights.

  Benedek wanted her. All the time. Unabashed. He’d never been less than honest about it. She’d never been less than honest about the fact that it annoyed her.

  And he must have recalled that because he turned away, took a few steps back, turned to her again. “Also, I wanted to let you know that the rebels in the catacombs have been rounded up and placed under arrest. The palace is safe. All entrances are sealed. Nobody goes in or out except by royal order. You’re safe here.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “But I understand if you want to leave immediately.” He waited.

  She didn’t say anything. She had planned on catching the first flight out. God, she hated flying. And she would be flying all alone. Craig wouldn’t be going home with her. She hadn’t even begun to process that yet, although she had placed a call to the agency as soon as she’d arrived at the palace.

  “I can’t tell you that if you stay a few days, we can have the opening night…” His handsome face darkened.

  The opera house was his baby. The damage to that must have gotten to him more than anyone suspected. But there’d be no opening night, not for weeks or months. The two bombs that had been set off inside the building had done considerable damage. She’d seen that firsthand.

  “I’d like you to stay anyway,” he finished, his gaze challenging her.

  She thought for a moment. “It’s not like I’m looking forward to flying right now,” she said, more to herself than to him. She could have used some time to calm down after all the excitement.

  He nodded. He knew. Of course, he knew. No matter how good her PR agency worked, probably everyone knew about her freakish fears and panic attacks.

  “I’m—doing better with that.” She hated how defensive she sounded. People who always insisted they were better usually weren’t. He probably knew that, too.

  “A lot of people are scared of flying and you have more reason than most.” He sounded understanding.

  Still, she was less than thrilled with the discussion. She had made it a point to become a strong woman. She abhorred her own weaknesses.

  “It was a long time ago.” She sat on the edge of the bed.

  He took a few steps toward her. “You lost your mother and brother in a plane accident.”

  Not a day had passed since that she hadn’t thought about it. “Craig saved my life,” she said at last. “He held me back from going to the airport to have a vocal cord injury dealt with. He forbade me to wait until I got home. I was pretty mad at him.” He’d treated her like a child that night, and it rankled. If she could have raised her voice, they would have had a shouting match right at the hospital.

  “Were you close to your brother?” he asked.

  This was a topic she’d never discussed with anyone. “Yes.” No need to get any more personal than tha
t. Except that the warmth in Benedek’s eyes got to her. “He wasn’t my brother.”

  She’d never told that to anyone. And she shouldn’t have said those words now. Her life was forever fodder for the tabloids.

  “Just between the two of us,” she added, and could tell from Benedek’s quick blink that she’d offended him.

  He was a prince. Did she really think that he was going to run to the papers with the news? She didn’t know what to think about anything. She was too tired and he was too close. His strong presence drew her like a magnet. She wanted nothing more than to rest her head against his wide shoulders.

  Did that mean that she was weak? As weak as her mother had been?

  “I think my walls are crumbling,” she said at long last, the fight leaving her all of a sudden.

  He took another step closer. “Good. I want to see what’s inside. I want what’s inside, Rayne.”

  She gave a quick, desperate laugh, pulling her robe tighter. “You know what’s inside? Nothing. The walls are all there is.”

  “I don’t believe that.” He was standing right in front of her now, reaching for her hands.

  She pulled them away from him. “The inside is hollow. The strength is in the walls. There’s nothing inside but fear and dark dreams and loneliness.” She’d never opened up this much to anyone before and it terrified her. She hadn’t lied. Her walls were coming down, at least as far as he was concerned. But what if he saw that hollow core and he turned and walked away?

  “You’re wrong about that.” He took her hands again and this time he didn’t let go when she tugged. “There’s incredible strength and beauty inside. I’m not going to quit until I’ve shown you that.”

  Something about that pricked her memory. Craig had said something like that once in the past. About her having to let her walls down someday if she wanted to be truly free. “Craig…” she started, but wasn’t sure how to finish as a new wave of grief hit her.

  His gaze grew unreadable. “You loved him.” His fingers tightened on hers, not enough to hurt, but enough to hold her securely.

  She nodded. “I cared for him. And he cared for me, but I couldn’t trust that enough to fully accept it. I didn’t realize how genuinely he cared for me until after he was dead. He was a true friend. I missed out on that.”

  “A friend?” His gaze lightened.

  “I didn’t know. He was on my payroll. You know what I mean? We got along great, but—How do you know when someone really cares? I didn’t know until he stayed behind in the opera house because I was there. He could have left with the audience. He would still be alive.”

  “He was a brave and loyal man,” Benedek said.

  “I have a hard time believing in people.”

  “Nobody can blame you, considering your past.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. “My first manager made me his lover. Made me think I was in love with him.”

  An eyebrow slid up his forehead. “I thought you were fairly young when you had your first manager?”

  Way too young to know what she was doing, for sure. In hindsight, she knew now that Preston had simply seduced her to tie her more completely to him. She had been his golden ticket.

  Thunder stole across Benedek’s face at the same time as thunder clapped outside. “What did that bastard—”

  “Then when I was almost twenty, a record label investor came into the studio,” she cut him off, not wanting to dwell on the confusion of her adolescence. “Philip. He was even more powerful than my manager. He said he was going to save me. I let him.”

  Except that her marriage to Philip hadn’t saved her. It put her under Philip’s control, her and the increasing amounts of money she eventually made. But she found her true strength under that tyranny. And then she divorced him. And she had not been able to trust or love since.

  “So there’s a reason why you dislike men with any sort of power,” he said with a rueful smile, loosening his hold on her but not letting her go. “Would it help if I abdicated?”

  She shook her head.

  “So you’re prepared to dislike me no matter what I do?” He watched her.

  “No. I mean, I like you already. You don’t have to abdicate.”

  He gave her a smile of utter masculine pleasure.

  He was breathtaking, no two ways about that.

  “Preston and Philip were…” She didn’t want to stop talking, because she was afraid that if she did, he would kiss her. And she knew she would be lost then. “It wasn’t just me. My brother and mother depended on me. We weren’t close like normal people, but they were the closest I ever got to anyone.”

  “And then they died in that accident.” His gaze slid to the bed for a second before it settled back on her.

  She knew he wanted to sit there next to her, but he was waiting for some sort of a sign that it was okay with her. She couldn’t, not even if all he wanted was to comfort her. She wasn’t ready, or maybe she was more than ready. Maybe she didn’t trust herself that they would stop at comfort. Maybe she didn’t want to stop. And that scared her.

  “So how did your brother come into your life? You said he wasn’t there from the beginning,” he prodded her.

  She didn’t want to talk about it. Which made it all the more strange that words were coming out of her mouth, like a jammed-up creek breaking loose all of a sudden. “At one of the buildings where we stayed, a prostitute lived in the apartment next to ours. During the day, my mother was gone, looking for work or doing this and that for money, sometimes waiting tables in various dives in the neighborhood. Billy’s mother slept during the day, entertained her male clients at night. Sometimes, we talked. Then his mother went out one night, trolling the streets for a John. And she never came back.”

  That had scared her more than it had scared Billy, who’d been three years younger than she. It was the first time she realized that could happen to her, too. She’d spent nights lying awake, worrying what would happen to her if her mother didn’t come back one day. One of the many shrinks she’d seen since told her that could be the root of her phobias—all that childhood anxiety.

  Whatever infrequent groceries her mother brought home, Rayne had been careful to share with Billy. The kid survived for three months on that. Then one day, a John who was visiting another “lady” across the hall heard Rayne sing. He owned a joint. He offered her money to sing there one night a week. Her mother would have let her do anything for money. She wasn’t a bad mother, although she drank more than was healthy for sure. Times were just that desperate.

  “I was discovered at about that time. One gig led to another. When we moved, I insisted we take Billy with us.” And as long as she brought in the dough, her mother wouldn’t ever say no to her.

  Eventually she changed. She laid off the booze and did the best she could to make up for their beginnings. Billy had grown into a decent young man who ended up handling Rayne’s accounts and doing it well. But there were emotional gaps that wouldn’t have been there with a normal family. They all had attachment issues. And despite all of that, she loved them.

  “And then they died because of a computer error, a miscalculation of the amount of fuel their plane needed to get from New York to Washington, D.C. The plane crashed two miles from the runway.” Her lips were so tight the last few words could barely clear it.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He wasn’t the first person to tell her that. Hell, she’d paid two hundred dollars an hour to her last shrink to assure her of the same thing.

  “They were in New York because of me.”

  “If it weren’t for you, how long do you think Billy would have made it in the first place?”

  She didn’t want to think about it. God, she was so tired of thinking about all of it, of the picture of the burning plane that was splashed all over the front pages of every major newspaper the next day. She wanted oblivion, if only for a few minutes. So she pushed away from the bed, walked into Benedek’s arms and kissed him.
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br />   She’d expected a tender response. Instead, he kissed her with full-on passion, and it turned out that was exactly what she needed. Thirty seconds later, she barely remembered where she was, let alone the past. In another thirty seconds, she was naked.

  He picked her up to take her those two steps to the king-size bed, lay her on the silk cover. Her body sank into the soft bedding. Before her bath, she couldn’t wait to get back here, figured she’d be asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. Now sleep was the furthest thing from her mind.

  His hard, muscled body covered her like a shield. Fire spread in her veins as his tongue danced with hers. Need met equal need.

  It’d been a long time since she’d had a lover. Relationships were the one area in her life where she consistently failed. So she’d been alone, a lot. Her body didn’t waste any time now reminding her of what she’d been missing.

  Her being naked and him fully dressed added another level of delicious tension. At another time, with another man, she might have felt at a disadvantage. Not with Benedek. Not when his dark gaze devoured her.

  His clever, all-knowing architect hands explored her body. When his palms came up to cover her breasts, she closed her eyes on a sigh. His thumbs teased her nipples into distended peaks, generating electric charges that ran straight to the heat that gathered between her legs.

  She reached up to push off his suit jacket. He helped. She made quick work of his tie and tossed it aside without looking to see where it fell. Then she went for his blue satin shirt, then her hands were spread over his warm muscles. Heaven.

  His body had a sinuous strength that didn’t surprise her. And man, oh man, was that fancy body doing things to hers that set her head spinning.

  He took care of the rest of his clothes. And finally they were both completely naked.

  He’d showered, too, while he’d been gone, and his warm skin had that faint masculine soapy scent that got to her on the most basic, primal level. At this moment he wasn’t a prince, he was just a man, a man very much aroused. And her body was beyond ready for him.